Seems to be a good start, but far below beta status! Until now everything is better in Ship Simulator 2008 - I'm not sure about SSE for various reasons - but there are a lot of things to get improved on this 'new' game.

I have to say I am not impressed with this stuff. A tug taking a large ship in tow and travelling at 13.3 kts immediately it hooks up. The two ship models shown in the video are of very poor quality. As Michael says SS2008 is vastly superior, both in detailed vessels and more so with the environment. I just wish that Vstep had not ceased developing the Ship Simulator games. I do miss the pleasure of being able to help, even in a very small way.

I do like the way the windows are modelled with the weathering effects and bolts. Makes the interior feel more like actual interior.But yeah, the dynamics could use a big improvement, especially the rolling of the ship looks too violent.

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I can't see any difference to an early (beta) version of SS08. The spoken comment behind the movie is amazing due to the attempt to compete with SSE in that stage of development. It's miles away! And to be honest, the windows of the tug are too dirty...

I bought the "early access" the other day, and at the moment it doesn't compare with the V-STEP series in terms of handling/dynamics, particularly SS08.

But, it is an early access and I suspect if Excalibur are willing to create a game from scratch and do something which has already been "done", then they must be willing to throw a lot more time and money at it. They wouldn't go down the road of doing what has already been done by V-STEP if they didn't believe there was something to be made out of it.

SSE was and is a poor show, and it is is a shame because there was definitely room for a continuation of the series. Perhaps Excalibur will provide that instead of V-STEP in future; only time will tell!

Nah, we are not in worry. As a few above me mentioned, their simulator needs a ton of work on the dynamics and realism before it even comes close to SS08, not to mention Nautis- our main product. Unless their company and product would grow immensely and improve on the realism, this game is as much a competitor as Virtual Sailor. Now I'm not saying the game is bad before anyone interprets it that way. I think what they are doing looks pretty cool and it shows a lot of potential. I'm only saying that Vstep doesn't need to worry about any competition, only that people come to us for technical support for ESS because of any possible confusion- as this sometimes happens with the Astragon Binnenfahrt Schiff Simulator as well.

And if we would assist other companies making a nautical simulator we would shoot ourselves in our own foot.

Nonetheless I'm curious to see what this game becomes and wish them the best of luck.

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I would like to suggest a joint-venture between VSTEP and the maker of ESS (which seems to be again a Dutch company?!) for a common profit. Not only for themselfs but for us Gamers as well! In fact we won't get any new version from VSTEP, accept some much appreciated things from our free lancers. SSE plus ESS could launch a viable prosecution.

Whether ESS or Vstep would intend or agree to share profits is doubtful, doesn't it? Their repective game and physics engines are probably different, even if both companies share the same potential community of gamers and a similar relatively narrow game simulation concept.A superficial look at the new game seems to indicate that ESS's knowledge of ships is derived from existing simulation games instead of maritime expertise, and that they have no -or not yet- succeeded to insert correct (hydro) mechanical parameters in the equations of their physics engine.

It isn't really a big deal if their developers are aware of the issue, the physics engine is necessarily enough correct and accurate, but has almost certainly no adequate representation of water resistances nor propeller thrust laws, nor full simulation of rudder or wind forces, things that are too specific and useless in other simulations.The only difficulty is that the relevant literature is so abundant, so rich in scope and details, that the basics can remain out of sight, lost amid concepts more or less right ot wrong.ESS is anyway on track to become the successor of Extremes, one can hope that the ESS ship parameters will be accessible, like they are in Virtual Sailor or FS (or even partially Extremes).

As we all know, the very first attempts of creating a ship simulator by VSTEP were quite poor as well. Nobody in the office has any idea about ship handling, ship dynamics or anything else around ships nor seafaring. Accept some minor experience from sailing or surfing. Therefore the first Pro-Version grounded heavily. It needed the efforts of many experienced people to develop the game into a serious one. And exactly that's the status of ESS right now. So why not link up the know-how of VSTEP with the enthusiasm of ESS to re-animate a written off game? VSTEP will concentrate on their successful NAUTIS, there is no need to keep the game enclosed by their own. Maybe there is some revenue to attain by a complete new version, supported by VSTEP and mainly man-powered by ESS. Look, there is just a manageable crowd of hard-core-gamers left. They won't spend money for SSE any more I fear. As well as the larger group of semi loyal customers and I can't believe, that there are any new customers at all. But perhabs they could be caught by a renewed game.

You are quite right about the unsolved issues Vstep faced until end 2008 when they eventually came to tackle with Ship Sim 2008 Pro and its sequels. "Excalibur" is the developer of the game, while Excalibur Publishing is the publisher distributing the game through Steam. They also publish "Transocean" a game similar to PoC developed by Deck 13. Like Mr Robville, I think that associating the name of Vstep to any ship simulation indie game would be not only pointless, but also detrimental for them to do it openly.

Also, there is no need for many people to help overcome the most evident shortcomings of ESS in ship handling and dynamics, and we moderators here know exactly how few it was, and how it was frustratingly difficult to be listened to for some things, probably because of the workload involved by the necessary changes.It also remains to be seen in what measure the ESS developers intend to improve the realism of the game, how responsive they would be to suggestions coming so late in their development.The question should be asked to the ESS developer himself, if they would like it?

Exactly. Realisticly seen. If I were the developer of ESS and I looked at SSE, I probably wouldn't even want to be associated with that franchise to begin with. Because they would have two options: 1. Create a fresh game with a new reputation which is completely in your hands or 2: begin with a reputation of bugs and issues that you suddenly become responsible for. I would choose the former. Why taking over a game that many people negatively remember for it's issues while you can start from a clean slate?Even on their Facebook page I read plenty of comments mentioning their abhorrence towards SSE. So why bringing that trouble onboard? It could harm their reputation.

Right at this moment they are doing stuff SSE didn't. And accurate or not, most gamers don't care about realistic physics. If they read an explicit feature where you can sink your ship and walk onboard while it does, you have already won most gamers over ShipSim.As a matter of fact, if they would make large container ships accelerate from 1kt to 30kts in one minute I'm sure people would like it and blame Vstep's sim for "always having been too slow"- even though it would have been more realistic.

I think if they play it well and do right what SSE did wrong it can become a very popular game. It wouldn't even need more features than SSE did. Just add a solid game, sinking ships, a Titanic, mods and you are settled. Kinda like the Sony presentation on the E3 about their PS4 after Microsoft's presentation about Xbox One; they only mentioned stuff that you would think is common in a gaming console, but more out of relief rather than curiosity people cheered the PS4's "features" only because Xbox had this many restrictions.

Anyway, bottom line, I would never see a collaboration happen between Vstep and ESS's developer. Even how much people would like it. There are too many legal issues, reputation issues, and above all they are competitors.

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Well said, Robin! With a lot of self-criticism towards SSE. To be honest, I never thought about a realistic way to put SSE and ESS together - and I think the market for ship simulating games is comparatively small, there is no place for two or three serious games at once. Keyword competitor: I guess nobody will earn money with any kind of a ship simulator on a game basis. And they never did in a mentionable dimension.

From my quite egoistic view I won't accept, that SSE goes down step by step. The German community is virtual no longer existent, beside a few posts around bugs in some missions. I'm definitely not able to cope with the current mission creator, because it is far away from any intuitive way of making missions. It's made from and for computer freaks, not for a simple user. I have done more than 100 missions for the game until SSE came out. And I think a lot of attraction for the users was produced by exciting missions from a large group of mission creators for sure. A few have continued to make new missions, but in general the request for new stuff (missions, vessels, ports...) has clearly decreased within the last years towards null.

Ones again from my very own view it is frustrating to have no chance to keep the good old times alive with a large community in Germany and abroad.

It will probably in terms of existance due to it's later release date, but as a simulator I actually doubt it.Despite SSE's flaws I still see it as a better sim. The creators of ESS basically got their potential handed to them on a silver platter yet the've decided to take the safe route and only do stuff ShipSim already has done before. For example, they even kept a game over screen when a ship sank in the game, I mean, come on, they had a golden bone to throw at "sink fans" who were bothered with ShipSim having a game over message ruining it for them.

Also, walkthrough's are very limited, physics to be much improved, environments are nothing new (as far as I have seen), ships are limited and overall graphics are not that better compared to ShipSim. Only the bridge interior graphics look better.

I highly doubt the devs did enough research on the market before they started on this, because I can see a lot of missed opportunities. I have a feeling they simply made it to jump on the simulator bandwagon instead of wanting do make something new and good for the virtual sailors out there.

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